Illegal immigrants' activity in drug trade uncertain

Governor has claimed majority are smugglers

Gov. Jan Brewer's recent statements linking illegal immigration to drug smuggling and beheadings have again put the focus on the connection between Arizona's porous border and criminal activity.

Exploring any link between illegal immigration and other crimes is difficult.

There is little in the way of reliable data that indicate what crimes immigrants may commit after crossing the border illegally. That uncertainty makes it easy for politicians and advocates to make bold statements that are nearly impossible to confirm or refute.

Brewer's statement that "we all know that the majority of the people that are coming to Arizona and trespassing are now (becoming) drug mules" fits neatly into a category of claims that are hard to verify.

"I wouldn't know how to begin to validate those statistics," said Lt. Jeff Palmer of the Pima County Sheriff's Department's border-crimes unit, which focuses on violent crime associated with human and drug smuggling.

Longtime smuggling routes for people and narcotics have been taken over by drug cartels, Palmer said.

But "there's no way of telling how many illegal aliens are smuggling drugs," he said. "We do know there are a significant amount who don't have the ability to pay for entry into the United States and one way they pay for entry is by carrying drugs."

Crime data

The lack of reliable data is largely because of the way immigration laws are enforced. Various federal agencies work with state and local law-enforcement agencies to target "criminal aliens." They prefer to escort most illegal border crossers out of the country as quickly as possible, without gathering criminal information unless the crossers are high-level offenders.

One way to gauge criminal behavior of illegal immigrants is to look at how many have been convicted of serious crimes.

According to the state Department of Corrections, 6,010 illegal immigrants are in state custody, including more than 2,000 who were convicted of drug violations serious enough to result in a prison sentence instead of a short stay in jail.

Of the 34,000 remaining inmates in state custody, the largest portion, more than 6,000, also are being held on drug charges.

With an estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants living in Arizona, those convicted of serious crimes are small in number; those guilty of large-scale drug crimes, even smaller.

In the past 18 months at Maricopa County jails, among those inmates suspected of being in the country illegally, more than 35 percent were brought in on misdemeanor allegations, meaning they were arrested for relatively low-level offenses.

The remainder faced felony charges. But some crime statistics suggest a greater level of offense than they really represent.

Arizona lawmakers, with the support of their constituents, have taken steps in recent years to criminalize some of the behavior associated with living in the country illegally, such as changing identity theft from a misdemeanor to a low-level felony. Immigrants are often charged with ID theft for using fake employment documents.

The changes have contributed to more illegal immigrants being charged as felons, doubling the number of charges for identity theft in Maricopa County from 149 in 2007 to more than 300 in 2009.

Federal courts have experienced a similar shift in the past 20 years, according to an analysis from the Pew Hispanic Center.

In 1991, immigration offenses made up 7 percent of all federal convictions, and by 2007, immigration offenses represented nearly 25 percent of federal convictions.

Mark Lopez conducted the Pew study and said the changes in the federal-court system reflected a few different patterns.

"In this period, we've seen the current wave of immigration really take off," he said. "We'll see more Hispanics in federal court because of changes in enforcement, changes in federal laws and just more people."

Arizona's new immigration law adds another possible charge. Senate Bill 1070 makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally and states that an officer engaged in a lawful stop, detention or arrest shall, when practicable, ask about a person's legal status when reasonable suspicion exists that the person is in the U.S. illegally.

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Drawing any definitive conclusions from crime statistics can be a dangerous proposition, said Bill Hart, a policy analyst at Arizona State University's Morrison Institute who studies criminal justice.

The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that half of all violent crimes in America go unreported, he said, and data on undocumented immigrants are unreliable.

Violent crime is down statewide as it is in the rest of the nation, according to FBI statistics.

But the discussion of violent crime and illegal immigration draws on several dynamics, Hart said. The violence that accompanies smugglers is real and documented.

On Thursday, a massive gunbattle between rival smugglers 12 miles south of the Arizona border near Nogales killed 21 people and wounded at least six others.

"It's this conflation that people get mixed up when they think of this. They think of several things being the same thing," Hart said, noting violence in Mexico, border crossings and violence in the Valley associated with drug and human smugglers.

"People too easily can be put in a state of general fear when people talk too loosely about associating concerns with undocumented immigration with concerns about crime," Hart said. "But the two are not that connected."

Critics of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration-enforcement efforts, which center on worksite raids and crime sweeps to net illegal residents, contend that the operations largely impact those whose most serious crime is illegally crossing the border. They contend that Arizona's new immigration law won't deter hardened criminals from remaining in the state.

Though there's little evidence to support the idea that half of the immigrants illegally entering Arizona are involved in the drug trade, there is no question that drug smuggling plays a significant role in violent crime.

The kidnappings and home invasions in Phoenix that made worldwide news last year were almost exclusively linked to the drug trade and the area's status as a staging point for nearly half of all the drugs coming into the United States.

"As long as Phoenix continues to be a hub for cartel drugs being stashed here and shipped to other parts of the country . . . the robberies are going to continue," said Pete Forcelli, a supervisor with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who helped combat the kidnappings last year.

"These guys will go where the money is. A guy who's willing to run into a house where he might encounter an armed gunman is a guy who doesn't feel he has much to lose."